Tag Archives: Endangered killer whales

NOAA has agreed to conduct a status review to determine if Puget
Sound’s killer whales should remain on the Endangered Species
List.

The agency received a petition from the Pacific Legal
Foundation, which claims that the three Southern Resident pods
should be considered just a part of a larger population of orcas.
According to the PLF, the Southern Residents do not meet the legal
definition of “species” that qualifies them for listing:

“The term ‘species’ includes any subspecies of fish or
wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any
species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when
mature.”

The 62-page PLF petition
(PDF 384 kb) — filed on behalf of three parties, including
California farmers — argues from a carefully constructed legal
analysis that says NOAA should never have listed the Southern
Residents in the first place.

When I first read the petition in August, I believed it was just
an effort to rehash the legal arguments that NOAA went through
during the listing process, following a federal court order in
2003. But NOAA apparently sees things differently, according to a
news
release issued yesterday:

“NOAA said the petition presents new information from scientific
journal articles about killer whale genetics, addressing issues
such as how closely related this small population is to other
populations, and meets the agency’s standard for accepting a
petition to review.”

NOAA apparently is taking a close look at a 2010 study
led by Malgorzata Pilot, which was used by the petitioners to
argue that the Southern Residents are not genetically isolated.
From the petition:

“The significance of the findings of Pilot et al. (2010) is
threefold.

“First, they demonstrate with data that social interactions
among killer whale pods do occur in the wild and they occur more
frequently than has been reported (i.e., many interactions are
simply ‘missed’ by human observers who cannot watch a vast area of
ocean to take note of killer whale pod interactions, 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, year round)….

“Third, Pilot et al. (2010) explain why mtDNA haplotypes (groups
of genes that are inherited together by an organism from a single
parent) can be highly divergent among ecotypes but not nuclear DNA
markers….Therefore, if only mtDNA is considered in an analysis, the
loss of mtDNA variation in populations (also referred to as lineage
sorting) can give an erroneous appearance of populations (and
putative species) being genetically isolated because they are
trying to maintain taxonomic differences while at the same time
ecotypes and populations are not isolated for nuclear genetic
variation.”

Sorry if that’s a little technical, but it shows why NOAA
decided to take up to an additional nine months to decide if the
petitioners have a case based on arguments about genetic isolation.
Are the Southern Residents a distinct population segment of the
overall species?

The petitioners argue that NOAA improperly declared the Northern
Pacific killer whales (Northern and Southern Residents) as a
subspecies, making the Southern Residents a DPS of a subspecies —
which, they argue, is illegal under the Endangered Species Act.

In response to NOAA’s status review, the Center for Biological
Diversity, which fought the first legal battle over the listing,
issued a
news release saying that nothing has changed in the realm of
science. The population qualifies as a DPS, because it is one of
only a few to feed extensively on salmon; it has a unique dialect;
and it is genetically unique.

Stated Sarah Uhlemann, an attorney at the Center for Biological
Diversity:

“It would be a tragedy to strip Washington’s most iconic species
of protections. Only around 85 southern resident killer whales are
left, and their Endangered Species Act listing is critical to the
population’s recovery in Puget Sound.

“Nothing has changed in the science to show that orcas are
faring any better or are somehow suddenly undeserving of endangered
species protections. Although the agency’s decision to consider the
delisting petition is unfortunate, the species’ status is unlikely
to change as a result of the agency’s review, and these
irreplaceable killer whales will almost certainly keep their
protections.”

Meanwhile, in terms of classifying orcas, there is an ongoing
effort to include captive killer whales among the population listed
as endangered.
See Water Ways, Oct. 24, 2010.

And there’s a new story by
Associated Press reporter Dan Joling, who writes about an
effort to declare transient killer whales a new species and name
them for the late Michael Bigg, a killer whale researcher who
developed today’s common method for identifying individual
orcas.